The Magician by Michael Scott

It is hard not to compare this series of young adult fantasy books with Harry Potter. Both Harry Potter and the Nicholas Flamel books concern magic, immortality, the epic struggle of good and evil and children that are powerful magicians, but grew up unaware of their power.

The first book, The Alchemyst (my review), barely started the series. Even at 400 pages, we only follow the two teens for two more in the first book. The Magician is just under 500 pages and only gets us another 3 days. But these books are not slow. They follow two 15 year old twins that we discover in this book are, in fact, the twins of an old prophesy.

This is not a new theme for young adult books. I think it is one of the older themes of young adult books, the discovery that you are someone that really is important. There is a Steve Taylor song, “Hero”, that talks about a boys dream of becoming a hero. As the boy ages in the song, the dream cracks, but does not die. The hero is what most boys want to be (an probably most girls too.)

This series is written for a slightly older audience than the early Harry Potter books. My guess is that most kids won’t be that interested until around 12 or 13.

This series is also a good example Chris Anderson’s concept of Free. The first book in this series was free, temporarily. I read the book based on the free and the good reviews. I hadn’t heard of either it or the author before. But since then I have purchased two additional books in the series and will likely keep purchasing books by Michael Scott.

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Update I have since finished the next book in the series, “The Sorceress“. It was good as well but not a good reason to have a separate review so soon after reviewing the previous ones. The fourth book doesn’t come out till May and I think is the last in this series. So I will probably have a wrap up review when it comes out.

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